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Atlas Wriggled

Hitch-22 was a title born of the silly word games we played, one of which was Titles That Don’t Quite Make It, among which were A Farewell to Weapons, For Whom the Bell Rings, To Kill a Hummingbird, The Catcher in the Wheat, Mr. Zhivago, and Toby-Dick

Salman Rushdie remembers a fun word game he played with Christopher Hitchens.

Over breakfast, Les UDs have started coming up with some of their own:

To Have and Not Have
The Siblings Karamazov
Pride and Prejudgment
Darkness at Eleven-Thirty
The Way of All Skin

Margaret Soltan, April 27, 2012 8:06AM
Posted in: bad writing

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23 Responses to “Atlas Wriggled”

  1. Dave Stone Says:

    I’m feeling Shakespearean this morning:

    Romeo and Brandee
    Much Ado About Zilch
    Dick III
    A Midsummer Night’s Zoning-Out
    Love’s Labours Somewhere on My Desk

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Much Ado About Zilch is the winner.

  3. Jeremy Bangs Says:

    Ed-School Diaries?

  4. Alan Allport Says:

    East of Ipswich

  5. Joshua A. Miller Says:

    I Married a Social Democrat
    The Human Blotch
    Portnoy’s Kvetch
    Pink Noise (Also other color plays: i.e. “The Brownest Eye”)
    Mao 3.0
    Tangelos Are Not the Only Fruit
    Man Who Almost Nobody Notices, But Isn’t Quite Invisible Because That’s Just Crazy
    The Brief Wondrous Life of George Smith
    Neverending Pun

    In Search of Lost Time 🙂

  6. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Joshua: Les Soltans are currently giggling. Winner, I think: I Married a Social Democrat. The best titles seem to me to follow the principle of profound dropping off, profound disappointment, in the final word, and that one’s a great example…

  7. TAFKAU Says:

    Can I play, too?

    Of Mice and Guys
    The Angry Grapes
    The Heart Hunts By Itself
    The San Luis Rey Overpass
    A Room with Windows

    And, another take on Pasternak:
    Zhivago, M.D.

  8. Shane Street Says:

    Why does Faulkner seem so particularly suitable to me here?

    The Noise and the Fuss
    As I Lay with a Hangnail
    Biblical Allusion, Biblical Allusion!

  9. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Shane: Biblical Allusion! – so fine.

  10. Margaret Soltan Says:

    TAFKAU: I too played with Heart is a Lonely Hunter – the ripest titles seem to me the longish ones full of poignancy, just like that one… (So for instance a title I just came up with is Pale Horse, Pale Jockey.) But you came up with something much better than I was able to come up with.

  11. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Alan: Fun! Didn’t know about that show.

  12. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Jeremy: Yes indeed.

  13. adam Says:

    My wife came up with For Whom the Bell Tinkles.

  14. Margaret Soltan Says:

    adam: Excellent!

  15. John Murray Says:

    Lady Chatterley’s Boyfriend

    Sinners in the Hands of a Peeved God

    The Red Badge of Curiosity

    Tess of the Joneses

  16. adam Says:

    Now I am in a John le Carré mode:

    The Spy Who Came in From the Chill
    Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Snitch
    The Little Drummer Co-Ed
    The Stitcher of Panama
    The Constant Horticulturalist

  17. Margaret Soltan Says:

    John: Tess of the Joneses is pretty brilliant.

    adam: My favorite is Constant Horticulturalist. And your list of five titles has me thinking we should make the game more challenging by trying to make limericks out of our titles…

  18. adam Says:

    As for Ian Fleming:
    On Her Majesty’s Secret Errand
    Dr. Maybe
    Goldtoe
    Quantum of Cheer-up
    Octomommy

  19. Margaret Soltan Says:

    The Public Transportation Named Desire

  20. bobopp Says:

    Sophie’s 6 to 5 Pick-em

  21. Margaret Soltan Says:

    bobopp: This one took me a second to get. Very nice.

  22. Andrew dunstall Says:

    This is great. You have to create a facebook group for this topic. I heard Geoffrey Robinson (QC for Julian Assange and ones of Australia’s eminent thinkers) mention this in a lecture:

    http://youtu.be/OHJGhWeNSeA

  23. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Andrew : I just watched and enjoyed the Robinson talk. Many thanks for the link.

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Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
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